After nearly a year on the project, Community Coalition has launched the new design for their website. I am happy that I had the opportunity to participate in this process. Despite the longer than expected timeline to complete the project, I gained valuable experience and learned a lot of things on my journey as the team’s UX and graphic designer.

Lessons learned

People come from different backgrounds and have different experience to bring to the table. Take advantage of this diversity.

When working with people, things can take longer than expected. But…

Be patient and enjoy the ride.

The organization knows their users best, or at least assume that they do, so trust what they tell you.

Be empathetic, even if you don’t think you can completely relate to the user.

Working together helps the overall understanding.

UX deliverables created

Wireframes

Personas

Interviewing stakeholders

Competitive analysis

High fidelity mockups

Process and user flows

Content inventory, analysis and strategy

Information architecture and taxonomy

Takeaways

You get out of it what you put in. If you put in more, you can get very valuable assets.

Be willing to learn from others. You learn more by keeping your ears open and mouth shut.

Keep technology in mind. Not all users are on a high speed device with quick internet access.

Do you best to get the organization to clean up items that are not being used on the site. Analytics is a great tool to validate this cause.

Try to tell the organization’s story. The more you learn about them, the easier this is to do.